Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

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With some short-term relief work in Asia/Africa and long stint in Telecom, Thang also earned a B.A. at Pennsylvania State University. M.A. in Communication at Wheaton Graduate School, M.A. in Cross-Cultural Communication at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Boston. In addition, he earned a CELTA – classes taken in Hanoi for cultural re-immersion.

Tag: God

  • Redemptive rain

    Our own Duc Huy, along with Dylan, during the 80’s, sang about “the hope of redemption” and how “the heart found joy once again”. The 80’s was the time of culture war: right vs left, straight vs gay, East vs West, secular vs conservative. Thirty years on, we are faced with a different set of…

  • Sand bag Body bag

    A Thai monk needs to lay more sandbags to stem the flow of water, while Libyan fighters can now lay down their guns since the Colonel was finally in the bag, body bag. One country exports rice, the other oil. Back in 1997, Thailand’s rising real estate bubble nearly took down neighboring Asian Tigers with it. This time, its rising waters will surely drive…

  • Neon God

    ” People bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made” (Sound of Silence now inducted to the American Museum as Classic American Sound to be preserved). Meanwhile, we spend an average 8 hours per month on Facebook, “the cathedral they made” (same amount of time people attend church services). Twitter is not addictive. Facebook is.…

  • Daughter-Daddy

    Before my daughter arrived, I had heard of other people’s birth complications which required C-section etc… So we took up Lamaze classes, and I felt “effeminated” among men and women with pillows. When I drove A. home the hospital  offered to wheel her out (already strapped in the car seat to begin with). In the parking lot (A.’s first outing) some…

  • Losing one’s self

    In a recent NYT op-ed, David Brooks summed up prevailing graduation themes: find yourself, live to the fullest, be passion-focused etc.. instead of losing yourself in solving others’ problem. Even my kid knows that time passes more quickly when you are absorbed in a task. When you lose yourself, you end up finding it. Before graduating, I…

  • Under-utilized imagination

    The-girl-with-a-dragon-tatoo series got me hooked. I know it’s cold  in Stockholm. And I know he did not produce tangible products from the factory, such as sweet or swatch. But he offered readers an emotional experience (getting out of mundane existence, stepping into character and experiencing triumph and tragedy unavailable to us otherwise).  The author did not live…

  • Recovering in Joseph’s way

    There are some positive upward movements today. Brought to mind Joseph story i.e. recovery from the seemingly bottomless pit (put there by who else but his own brothers). But Joseph managed to press “reset”, reinvent himself (befriending the warden), to eventually rise to be Chief of Staff. What did he have ? Persistence, ability to…

  • Think of me, next Memorial Day

    How much time do you have left? Life expectancy average has been up, but individually, it’s an open question. The question. And this question should stand Maslow scale on its head i.e. if you knew you were going to die tonight, would you be moving methodically up the Need pyramid? Or just go ahead to…